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Dr. Erpi Finds His Voice

(Learning with the Lights Off: Educational Film in the United States: Educational Film in the United States, voted best collection SCMS, 2013) Electric Research Products, Incorporated was a subsidiary of Western Electric in 1929 when their research was instrumental in creation of early sound film. This paper catalogues some of the struggles over who controlled that technology and what sound technology ultimately meant for the uses and purposes of motion picture media, itself. 

Orphans No More: Definitions, Disciplines, and Institutions

This introduction to the JPF&T—Journal of Popular Film and Television's 'Orphan's No More' issue, introduces the category of 'Orphan Cinema' popularized by both the Library of Congress and The Orphan Films conference. 

This essay provides an introduction to the discipline of “orphan cinema” as an outgrowth of the work of moving image archivists, ideological film analysis, and experimental film makers. The contradictory relationship

 between nontheatrical film, academic film scholarship, and Hollywood film production is briefly reviewed. Finally,

the article introduces the “institutional film” as a central theme in the nontheatrical film genre analyzed throughout the special “Orphans No More” issue of the Journal of Popular Film and Television.

The Encounter Group: Journey Into the Self

A selection from The Dandelion King; love and loss in the gas line. The film, "Journey Into the Self" produced with Carl Rogers popularized the idea of 'The Encounter Group' with this film, appearances on public television and a series of popular psychology books. Self-organized groups for progressive individuals who wanted to become 'self-actualized' could be found advertised in the want ads of local papers in the 1970s. These groups often shared progressive social visions as well as the intention to explore 'hang-ups'. 

Henry Strauss and the Human Relations Film: Social Science Media and Interactivity in the Workplace

Henry Strauss is a twentieth-century industrial filmmaker and producer whose three decades of work included a series of ground breaking human relations training films produced in a period when the postwar renegotiation of industrial relations was extremely tense and uncertain. In this article I examine Strauss’s work as a human relations innovator who produced and employed industrial film in a sociologically influenced manner to bridge labor conflicts in the postwar era. An examination of Strauss’s films illustrates the ways that social science—in particular, a new theory of small-group human relations—helped shape interactive practices embedded in the stories, technologies, even the architecture of communication in the workplace.

Grandma in China

Selections from The Dandelion King: love and loss waiting in the gas line, WSQ Volume 43, "The Child Issue" Numbers 1&2 Edited by Sarah Chinn & Anna Mae Duan

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